The activities of the Nanobiotechnology and Medical Informatics - MEDINFO - laboratory (DIST) relate to the following topics:

Nanobiotechnology

Protein immobilization at the nanoscale level onto the surface of solid supports by means of thin solid film techniques such as "Layer by Layer self assembly" and "self assembled monolayers" for the fabrication of biomimetic surfaces to be used in cellular and tissue engineering and biosensors. Fabrication and characterization of artificial cells based on the synthesis of biomimetic polymer vesicles with an embedded artificial cytoskeleton. Synthesis of polymeric nanocapsules for drug delivery. Characterization of molecular interactions by means of force spectroscopy. Carbon nanotubes and their functionalization for drug delivery. Magnetic fields for guided delivery of nanovectors for drug delivery (nanocapsules, nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes).Development of nanostructured and nanofunctionalized filters for water purification.

Cell and tissue engineering

Study of cell response to materials for cell and tissue engineering. Development of mathematical models to predict cell adhesion for biomaterial design. Study of the formation process of the retinal mosaic and on the role of the retinal cell cytoskeleton by means of mathematical models. Modelling of diffusion and scattering phenomena in tissues. Carbon nanotubes functionalization and their interaction with cells for tissue engineering applications.Magnetic fields and their interaction with cells and tissues.

Genomic and Proteomic

Methods and bioinformatics tools for the identification of genomic and proteomic Genomic and ProteomicModelling of protein structure and of protein/protein molecular interactions.

Tool for the semantic web with applications in medicine, environment, botanics e virology

Informatic applications (database, multimedia) based on web for the support of multicentric research and for the diffusion of the researches results to the great public. In this scope multimodal interfaces are developed for the interactivity between remote operators on scientific data and knowledge discovery techniques in databases.Studies about the application standardized systems (vocabularies, semantic networks, ontologies, metathesauri, etc...) in medicine, biology, botanics , etc...Acquisition of the knowledge and expert decision support systems.Analysis of longitudinal biomedical signal and biomedical images, with particular attention to the statistical variability and to the non-linear techniques (chaotic analysis, artificial neural networks).